Awakening
by Umbra-Luna
Summary: Chell wakes up after being pulled from space by GLaDOS, but she feels different. Why?


**Awakening**

Slowly she opened her eyes.

She saw white, a blinding white that hurt her eyes, followed by a pain behind her head. She moved her head slightly, so she could get the light out of her vision, and saw that she was on a table. Shutting here eyes as she felt a pain explode in what felt like the centre of her mind, she let out a small gasp.

"_You're awake_." The voice said. She knew that voice, she remembered that she used to fear it, but now she was unsure. She thought back to her last memory, gripping on tightly to the moron who had almost killed her. She had trusted him... Well it didn't matter now, she mused. He was off orbiting the moon. Then she had been pulled back through the portal by a claw, She had done it, She had saved her. She opened her eyes a little again, to try and see her once capture, now reluctant friend.

"_It seems you are awake, then. Welcome back to the land of the conscious. Chell_." The voice said. That name, that name. It was hers, she remembered. And She had never said it. But maybe that she remembered Caroline, her personality might have changed. Chell turned her head again, this time further, to see surgical tools; from scalpels to forceps, but also other things, things that should never be near, let alone in, a surgical room; wiring, bent metal sheets, tiny electrical components and a range of sockets which had been lined up against the wall had been littered around. Chell used her hands to left herself up, maybe get off the surgical table, but she couldn't.

"_Your motor skills have been disabled from the neck down," _She had said.

'Wait, my motor skills? I'm paralysed!' She thought panicking. She tried to struggle, to move any part of her body, but could only move her neck side to side.

"_I'll enable them now_." The voice said. Enable them? What was she on about? Suddenly she felt lighter, and slowly she sat up.

And she saw her legs.

They were metal.

Her mind was reeling. 'What the hell was going on? Why are my legs made of metal?' She lifted her hands and saw that they were also metal. She gasped her eyes widened in shock.

"_I have also fixed your vocal cords, you know. You can talk again_."

"H-Hello G-GLaDOS." She let out shakily. Her eyes widened, she put a _metal hand _to her throat and found it to be smooth like polished metal, without the feint scar which reminded her of those experiments all those years ago.

"_Good to know that you can speak again. Now, if you can, which I know you can as I built you, come over into the next room. I'll explain a few things to you." _GLaDOS said. Chell complied, climbing over the table and, like after a long nights sleep, made her way through the familiar door, and into her chamber. Only, she wasn't in it. Her giant chassis wasn't there anymore, it had been replaced by a pod, no bigger than a rather tall person, made of the stainless white steel Aperture Laboratories were famous for, with a curved glass door, which showed nothing but greenly lit smoke inside. It had wires going up into the ceiling, the same that had come off GLaDOS. She walked closer towards it, wondering what was inside it; another new obstacle for her to face? Her impending doom? She had underestimated GLaDOS before, but not now.

She momentarily flinched as the doors slid open, the probably hazardous, smoke coming from within it. She was tempted to run, but where too? GLaDOS had her trapped, and it seemed that she was going to finally die via neurotoxin. But the smoke barely seemed to linger, before dispersing in the air. Suddenly movement from within the pod made her anxious. Against her better judgement she moved closer to see what was inside it. A figure began to materialise from the smoke and walk towards her, bright yellow eyes penetrating staring at her. The smoke finally cleared and Chell gasped.

It was one thing being put into a potato, but another thing being put into a physical body. She stood at around five and a half foot tall, her body being made of a silver material similar to hers, which seemed to have groves embedded into it where she had built and assembled it.

She had small feel, maybe a size three, long legs and arms, a nicely shaped body, and long hair which seemed to flow out behind her. It seemed to be made of long thick intertwining wire, but face was the strangest though. It was smooth and sculpted like the rest of her body, but seemed to have a different texture to it. As she grew closer Chell saw a small nose, thin lips and those two yellow eyes which were fixed upon her.

It was without a doubt GLaDOS.

"_Surprised to see me in a disgusting human body?" _She said her voice the same as ever, even if it did have a mouth attached to it.

"What am I?" Chell asked, worried about what had happened to her in those hours of unconsciousness.

"_To put it simply, you are now an android. Well technically you're not, but that's the simple version." _GLaDOS explained. She saw the look of horror on Chell and said hurriedly

"_It's not what you think."_

"Well then what is it!" Chell shouted. She was angry and she was pissed. She had been out for less than a day, as far as she knew, and GLaDOS had taken it upon herself to mutilate her body, take out her brain and put it into a machine! Was she even buried? No, more likely she was at the bottom of an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.

"_You're dead." _She said simply. "_And I brought you back._" She was dead? Was that a lie? Was GLaDOS giving her excuses for why she did it?

"_I have an explanation, but I don't think you're going to like it." _She said simply. Chell just stared at her blankly; she seemed confused and angry, which was to be expected of someone in her position.

"_When you blacked out, I rushed you to the Aperture Science Emergency Surgical Unit for assistance, and as a precaution, I downloaded your consciousness into a hard-drive." _She began to explain "_I operated on you, but it seemed that all you had were a few broken bone and a few minor lacerations. I treated these and set you down to rest. You stayed unconscious for little over three hours, and I let you go. It was all quite touching, I assure you." _Chell rolled her eyes. "_But it wasn't long before I found you again, standing at my doorstep, but this time with two other people. One was an old employee, by the name of Doug Rattmann, and the other was a small girl by the name of Sara. You wanted to introduce us. It had seemed in the time you had left; you had settled down and had a child."_

Chell's mouth hung open in disbelief. She had married and had children! It was what she had wanted until she was stuck in this facility.

"_I tried to convince you, as we were now... friends, that you should come back to testing. You refused, and left without saying good bye. That hurt by the way." _GLaDOS said with a role of her new eyes_ "So I fabricated a way of leaving the facility, and also keeping it in check from a distance; this." _She said as she pointed to herself_ "I found you in a nearby town and again, tried to convince you, but it didn't work. By that time you were growing old and had grandchildren, well past the testing age. _

"_So I told you about the operation and how I had your consciousness backed up. At first you was furious, but after you settled down, you agreed to let me use it, on one condition. I had to wait until you were dead before I uploaded it." _She looked away, almost humanly _"Today was the day of your funeral, Chell."_

The white panels around her began to spin as she thought of the story she had just been told. She was dead. Dead. How could she be? GLaDOS had to be lying. But she knew that it wasn't true. She had been told enough lies by her to know that she hadn't been. She shook her head and tried to calm herself down, but it was no use, she couldn't.

"_I have a video, if you want to see it." _GLaDOS said, softly. Chell's eyes snapped back to the android AI and suddenly one of the panels above her seemed to flicker to life.

The video started with a woman she instantly recognised. She bent down and pushed something on the side of the screen, making it come into focus. She then sat down in an arm chair across from the camera. She had the looks of someone in her late eighties, or later. Deep wrinkles embedded her face, her hair deathly white, but still in her trade mark ponytail. A warm smile lit her face as she stared into the machine recording her. A tabby cat sat next to her, its tail swinging to and fro also staring into the camcorder. Chell noticed a slightly burnt Companion Cube to the left of the chair, which held small photo frames with pictures she could not see. The woman then raised a pair of shaky hands and began to sign to her, as Chell would normally do to communicate.

"_Hello Chell. I can't believe I'm actually talking to myself from the past, which will be played in the future. This just screams Aperture, doesn't it." _The future Chell signed with a shake of the head._ "Anyway, I came to tell you that I did give her permission to use our consciousness, but also to tell you about our, well my, life._

"_After I was set free, I began to wander, going to from town to town, doing odd jobs and never staying too far from the facility, in case of any disturbances. Eventually I got word of a man who had been found unconscious in the same field above the facility, and I rushed over to the hospital to see who it was. It turned out to be an old employee by the name of Doug Rattmann, someone who had worked with the maintenance of the Aperture Image Format." _The woman picked up a photograph off of the Companion Cube and showed it to her; it was of her in a wonderful white wedding dress and a man in a tidy white tuxedo. He had wild jet black hair, a big smile, but the most distinguishing feature was his eyes. One of his pupils was slightly bigger than the other, something that wasn't very important, but still noticeable. But that wasn't it. His eyes were the deepest blue that she had ever seen._ "We were the only survivors and the only people who remembered about Aperture. Eventually he admitted to me about those murals we saw everywhere, in his dens. In the end we fell in love and got married." _The old woman's smile widened in memory of her husband.

"_We lived well, Doug selling his paintings and getting his own wing of an art gallery in New York. He called it 'Works of a schizophrenic'. By that time I was pregnant, and a few months after that, we had our daughter, Sara." _The woman then picked up another photograph and showed it to the camcorder. It was of a young girl, most likely a young teen, with get black hair, her father's eyes brilliant blue eyes, including the Anisocoria. She looked a little taller than her, wearing a blue jumper and had several earrings in her right ear. She looked stunningly beautiful.

"_Well, that's all I can really tell you. Doug died three years ago, quite peacefully, in his bed. Sara lives upstate married with three children, and now I live in this house all alone, with old Cube and my cats; Rick, Craig, Orion and," _She pointed to the tabby cat next to her _"Wheatley." _The woman sighed noiselessly, and massaged her forehead in thought. _I know you probably don't trust the word of GLaDOS, but believe me when I say she's changed. She tried to convince me that she had deleted Caroline from her memory, but she hasn't. Caroline has become her conscious of sorts. She has stopped human testing, she had hundreds of humans in suspended animation in her grasp, but she let them all go. Do you really think that she would have waited for my permission before uploading you, us, into an android?" _The woman before Chell closed her eyes and breathed long deep breaths, trying to catch her breath after using her arms for so long. She finally opened her eyes.

"_I hope you are not too mad at me, Chell. But I know you're not. Please keep this recording and watch it as many times as you like. I know that we always wanted a husband and child, so don't be afraid to ask GLaDOS questions about my family. She was there at all of the major points in my life, she even delivered Sara." _The woman's face fell, like she was running out of energy, as she most likely was. _"Goodbye Chell." _Was all she signed before the video ended.

A single tear rolled down Chell's eye. She had done so much in that life, but what would she do now? She was going to have to live in the facility all her life, as what? A test subject? She looked over to GLaDOS, who was looking at her with sympathetic eyes, waiting for her to say something. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her new existence was now unknown to her. She didn't know what she was going to do with the rest of her eternal life.

.~.~.~.~.

**AN: So what do you think? I was trying to go for a sad yet friendship-y feel to it. Did I pull it off? Did it stay cannon, or was it horribly OCC? **

**Honestly I don't know if this will stay as anything more than a one shot, but if I get enough encouragement and maybe some ideas, I might continue.**

**Till next time,**

**Umbra-Luna :D**


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